Footsteps on the Desert Sky
by 1boo
Summary: poems, drabbles and oneshots revolving around the horrors of Ishbal. Around the gunshots in desert air and the bloody footprints in the sand. The hell that resides amongst the dunes, and in the hearts of all who are alive and curse it with every breath.
1. Somehow

Somehow nothing in this land is proud,

anymore.

Somehow nothing in this

damned desert

is sacred anymore.

And somehow it's ok

to shoot children if their eyes are red.

Red, red, red.

And sand and hell and screams

(Fuck, another man down)

bitter, bitter thoughts

and she hopes to hell there's regret behind them.

Her hair

is stringy

dirty, filthy

bleached bone white

by the desert sun

that eats everything.

Everything, everything.

(Is she going insane?)

There's blood in it too.

And she can't wash it out with water.

And nothing will wash her soul.

She is afraid of becoming used

to the crimson splash

that has inundated this damned desert

she is afraid she will never know anything else.

She once had a name.

Not the name the soldiers give her.

It was pretty. Like glass.

And breakable.

Oh, so breakable.

_Shattered._

What does she want?

Food, she guesses.

But can't remember the taste

of anything but sand.

And heat

blood and war.

Of bone white hair caught in her mouth

Is she still alive?

Somehow, she guesses.

Because she is still killing.

Somehow.


	2. He Was New

**A/N: This is for**_** icarus enjoyed the view**_**because she reviewed the first chapter (or whatever you want to call it. Part, maybe) and also, her review gave me this idea! There are so many for Ishbal! Just in thinking up the title, I came up with about ten different ideas. This is coming from someone who has a really hard time ever thinking up any titles at all, much less ten for one story! Okay, rambling over :D Enjoy!**

He was new. They all could tell. Everything about him was clean (to them) and sparkling and everything they lacked. It was then that she realized, as the man wandered about camp at the edge of her vision, that she could never go back to the human she once was, that that person still is. She saw, looking at him, just how easily she could pick out her ribs, just how hard her eyes were. She didn't wonder where that person had gone. She knew. Fucking hell she knew. And now their bodies weren't even the same anymore, her and that girl with the pretty name she couldn't recall. Didn't want to. That would be too easy.

If she remembered the girl from before, that human with a human body and a human heart, it would be unforgivable. To let herself fall back on memories that are growing fainter with every burst of harsh desert air, as if blown away with the tainted sand and who ever she was before Ishbal. She would not put herself on the same level as the men who gulped from their bottles and tried to forget. She was Riza Hawkeye. No name of girlhood. Just a word given to her face that even a drunk could slur to get her attention. It was quick to yell on the battlefield, when mortar is flying past her head and she needs to duck or get her damn skull bashed in like the guy lying beside her. Practical. Harsh. Brutal.

All sharp edges, rough and calloused and cutting. Like the grains of sand that are in her hair and eyes and clothes and probably her heart too. Because she will not face the shame of trying to force them out. To forget this is to sin her soul away. An utterly unforgivable thing, to forget the children dying in the street. To forget the way she leaps over them and uses them as shields of dead flesh in desperate moments in which a bullet is near her and it is not from her gun. To forget the screams of the dead the dying the left behind. To know she is going to have to watch this new man's eyes die. And maybe his body too.

She doesn't know why she wants that fire to continue to burn in the silly black orbs. Suddenly she wonders what he'd see if he looked at her eyes. But the question is discarded because she know's exactly what he'd see if he looked. An impractical question, a weak question. So it is killed. It is the way of life in this hell between the dunes.

He must've felt her gaze on him, because he looks up at her, a smile ready. She ducks quickly, not wanting to see the shock on his face if he notes what is reflected in her glassy, lifeless orbs.

He was so obviously new. No one ever looked at anyone. She kept her head down until he left.

**A/N: A simple little oneshot type thing that I'm stuffing into this story because... I can...? well, it's all Ishbal. If you have ideas, tell me! Mine tend to come in the middle of the night, when I'm so exhausted I can't believe it, in the middle of a math test... fire drills... real random times that I can't always write them down. Has anyone noticed that Ishbal follows the war in the middle east really well? I can glance at the front page of the New York Times and get an idea for descriptions. Y'know, background. Reviews are highly appreciated!**


	3. Before the Dawn

**A/N: Thank you so much for all the reviews! This is a songfic for We Are. Really good song, and you can find it easily on youtube. The writing before every verse strictly follows the contents of the verse, so everything is connected and symbolic. It also means this took a LONG time and lots of planning. But it was fun!**

**winglessfairy25 - thanks! It's funny that I can write angst, because I'm generally not an angsty person... :D I'm glad you like it!**

**icarus enjoyed the view - thanks for the ultra long review!!! I love those so much!!! now I have updated, so there is no need to hunt me down! Yay! I hope you like it :)**

**Hyrugi Kitsune - thank you!**

**And now...**

A man was shouting at the front of her tent, holding up the flap and letting in the air. It is cold. Her breath has taken visible form against her dark ceiling. Dark cloth... her home was an abyss at night. As her thoughts swirl with her breath, numb fingers scrabbled at silver buttons, her voice responding gruffly to the watchman. This was not a planned battle, so she had not slept in her uniform. Bastard had better not try to come inside. Her gun is always loaded, always ready. It makes up for the times (though they are few) that she is not.

The man moves on to rouse the occupant of the tent next door, footsteps crunching on the sand under his heavy boots. His voice continues on as she emerges into the desert night. Be ready in five minutes. Gather at the North-West corner. We march in half an hour.

Orders. And Hawkeye is a soldier, and soldiers do not question those orders, no matter what it does to them. It is like some masochistic fetish. And because she is a soldier and refuses to know anything else.

The desert sky is so beautiful at night. Stars and stars. The wind that sweeps her up and rattles her bones and shifts the world by night cuts her coldly, and she doesn't look up at the display of the cosmos, because soon that sky will be covered in smoke and blood.

That man is staring at it anyway. That one who was so obviously innocent, so blatantly ignorant of her world. She feels sick; he doesn't know what is going to happen. But there is nothing she can do but watch him with hollow eyes that might've once been full (she can't recall) as he marches to his doom. His time of living is slipping away, each second measured painfully with the morbid tick of her pocket watch. He is one of the new ones, but he will be just like her (or killed) by the time the sun breaks the horizon over the hills of sand to the east, and lights up the hellbent desert sky. She's beginning to think death is better, her stubbornness worn thin by the endless wind and the endless war. Worn by the graveyard to the east, marked sometimes just with sticks and tokens that the desert quickly claims as her own. As if they'd never lived, never died. Worn by those in the street that do not get the disputable (once upon a time) luxury of six feet under.

The man smiles at her and she tries not to shudder. He is dead before dawn.

_**See the devil on the doorstep now (my oh my)**_

_**Telling everybody oh just how to live their lives**_

_**Sliding down the information highway**_

_**Buying in just like a bunch of fools**_

_**Time is ticking and we can't go back (my oh my)**_

There was a reason she was there, originally. But it was long and complicated and impractical to think about at a time she could be jumped at any moment by desperate people with red eyes and nothing to loose. Who knew these sands and this damned desert better than she, even if it was all she could remember. All the reasons these people had nothing to loose, because she has taken it with her own tainted hands, her fingers clicking on the trigger, making sure to draw out every ounce of hope because that was what she was told to do. The reason she shot children and had to spend hours getting the blood off her uniform. The reason she new the stains would never wash away, no matter how pristine the blue cloth looked.

The reason. It had something to do with politics. And the country. That place she new more as a name, less as a place bustling with actual humans, instead of soulless beings who only knew orders and death and the black hole of the whiskey bottle. Now that man was reminding her that there were humans in this world. And she hated him for it, hated herself for remembering mostly. She will not leave it behind, because she will not and cannot forget the graves who's markers were stolen by the shifting of wind and sand.

In the end, everything becomes the desert. Hot and cold and uncaring of the passing of time. Blood soaked and ancient in what it has seen.

Around her though, there are too many men who have seen too much and never will go back again. Sure it was possible for war to end. But they all know that they will never leave Ishbal, except in death. Even standing with their families in front of the warm fireplace. They will truly be marching across the freezing midnight sands, eyes flicking in the darkness, kiss of death in a holster on their hip, every muscle tense in the primal (and only) instinct keeping them alive.

Who had they been before? All they knew was Ishbal and the desert and the war and the whiskey. The cigarettes and for some the red slashes across their wrists and the living hell that she found a joke to call "living".

_**What about the world today**_

_**What about the place that we call home**_

_**We've never been so many**_

_**And we've never been so alone**_

He may look relatively the same, generally human, not one of the desert lizards or the great black birds that circle endlessly, waiting for the smell of blood to alert them of their next meal. There are other men in the military with black hair and slanted black eyes. There are endless men in endlessly matching uniforms of bright blue and gold and silver watch chains. The colors are probably still there, like they were when she first came, but by now they seem long gone and unimportant. There may be every reason for him to be exactly the same as the rest.

But he is not. He is different. He is separate. His life is colorful and nice and everything she can only barely remember the words for, much less the actual feeling of. He is everything they are not, everything they are told by logic they once were, told by the desert they never were.

And now she is about to add him to their ranks of those hovering between humanity and death. Ropes of sand keeping them held to the earth.

He tries to talk to the others. Some respond. Others just glance at him, then get a flash of a full lipped smile, of skin without extra lines of age, and look away, not able to face the man who doesn't know what he is about to become. His words make no sense, as if he is talking from the other side of an abyss she cannot cross. His voice is odd, not rough enough, not haunted enough, and it has her world off-kilter, off-centered, unbalanced (as if it was ever anything else). He is smiling at them and attempting conversation. He doesn't know. What he is to become before he sees the next sunrise.

Her hands are scrubbed raw from the last battle, but there is no way to wash it away, just as there is no way to rinse this feeling that it's in a way her fault that he is marching in this freezing night, about to be stripped of everything. Of life. And she isn't doing a thing, doesn't know how to do a thing but watch more and more people die. Body, mind, and soul. Not necessarily in that order. Sometimes though.

_**You keep watching from your picket fence**_

_**You keep talking but it makes no sense**_

_**You say we're not responsible**_

_**But we are, we are**_

_**You wash your hands and come out clean**_

_**Fail to recognize the enemies within**_

_**You say we're not responsible**_

_**But we are, we are, we are, we are**_

They are still marching, no one speaking anymore, left with inner thoughts that they'd do anything to escape. Left to fend for themselves in the wastelands of their own minds, yet again contemplating the fact that they have to kill again. If she could remember what it was to reach out to someone, then she still wouldn't. Because one step towards him could only hurt him more, and she already has to watch that smile, that foolish idiotic, completely alien smile get crushed by the weight of the world; of the desert and the red flower of Ishbal. So she stumbled back two steps, getting no where, and can only watch as a human who's not, as a bystander without a soul.

Oh, what glory being a soldier brings! Some dying part of her throws out one final line of resistance. She nearly laughs at it, except she can't laugh. Nothing can resist this desert.

They're done walking and are being assigned to their positions surrounding sleeping innocents they were supposed to murder in their beds for a purpose they have forgotten, and she suspects might never have been there.

Really, she doesn't want to know. It could just make things worse, could just disrupt the order of things, because knowledge does not make things better here.

So she lines up, takes her place hidden in the desert outside the city. About to become a murderer for yet another night, yet another twisted day. She cannot count the lives she's taken, and yet somehow every one of the ghosts haunt her. But he is stationed near her, and she will now be forced to watch yet another.

A tiny smile of full lips that are ridiculously alive. Oh shit, make him stop and go away. She can't do it! She can't stand to watch this person's eyes die! She can't take it! But she does. And has no idea why.

_**One step forward making two steps back (my oh my)**_

_**Riding piggy on the bad boys back for life**_

_**Lining up for the grand illusion**_

_**No answers for no questions asked**_

_**Lining up for the execution**_

_**Without knowing why**_

Her stomach is swirling like it hasn't done since those early days when she tried to understand, those days when she was sick behind the tent, driven by the scent of blood that hangs so thick, even when it is not in the air.

He is standing next to her, his breath driven in white clouds against his hair and the dark shadows of rundown buildings. She keeps her visage impassive, checking the parts of her guns to make sure they are ready for the job ahead of her. There is a shifting of heat near her. He shifts to look at her. She can feel those eyes on her, and it's making her sick with guilt, the bitter flavor filling her mouth.

"I'm a little nervous." he confides to her ear. His breath is alive. Warm and humid.Whatever is left in her chest cavity tears, ripping her rotting heart a little further. Splitting her soul at the seams. She makes a rough sound in her throat that was not intended as any type of answer, a choke of sand and pain deep in her body.

He doesn't realize. The guilt is swamping her in great waves of heat like those that emanate off the dunes at high noon. It makes her want to give a high, silent scream to the bright desert sky, as red blood splattered her face, eyes squeezed shut, just like she used to until she realized that it was a good way to die. And back then the stubbornness was a good enough reason to live, so she'd stopped. It was the practical action.

But damn, he had no clue what he was about to become before her eyes. He doesn't suspect what is lurking within him, ready to come to the surface when this current being dies, what thing is about to become him. She doesn't know his name, or who he was. That doesn't matter, because he won't know it either, in a few short hours. Right now his hands are clean, tucked into crisp white gloves that look far too clean for this desert. But there is guilt welling up where there is no heart in her chest, just a little, pitiful organ that beats desperately, trying to give her a reason to let it continue its senseless rhythm. There is guilt spilling over because she is not going to do a thing, and can't.

_**You keep watching from your picket fence**_

_**You keep talking but it makes no sense**_

_**You say we're not responsible**_

_**But we are, we are**_

_**You wash your hands and come out clean**_

_**Fail to recognize the enemies within**_

_**You say we're not responsible**_

_**But we are, we are, we are, we are**_

Her ears, acute from days spent with every sense pricking, peaking in her body, holding out for the slightest warning so that she would be the one to shoot first. So that that feeble thing in her chest had reason to keep going, they pick up the first shots, yells in the distance.

Her body tenses, muscles ready, eyes flicking in the shadows. These people with red eyes and red blood are certainly just as used to war as she, and she expects them to act as such. She can sense him copying her stance, though she figures he hadn't heard the first signs of the hell to come. She's not ready, has never been ready, and never will be ready. That thought should comfort her, but it doesn't. A simple fact.

But it is not fear for life or death. It is the fear of what will happen to her already broken mind, what new horrors will create what new scars. Wether she lives or dies is of no concern.

Soon there will be nothing left to die except for an empty shell of flesh and blood and her damn heart, frantically beating in her ears, adrenalin rushing.

_**It's all about power then**_

_**Take control**_

_**Breaking the rule**_

_**Breaking the soul**_

_**They suck us dry till there's nothing left**_

_**My oh my, my oh my**_

There is rustling, a tiny, subtle click of a shotgun barrel. They're coming. Awake under the endless stars of the desert sky that no one can dare to look at. No one in this whole damn desert. Except maybe him, because he's not broken yet. The clock is ticking. Her watch chain is silver in the starlight, or it would be because she's told it is, because what is color anyway? It doesn't help her stay alive, or forget, or remember. Useless. Forgotten. Ticking down to the moment of sun and light illuminating everything she never wanted to see, in the desert sunrise, bloody to behold.

She slides her well polished gun out of its holster. Maybe... She takes a ready stance. Maybe he remembers that other world that the men sometimes speak of weakly, wistfully, bitterly. And even those find it hard to believe there really is a world outside this desert and this world. Maybe he can remember places without sand and people who would call her that name she's forgotten now. That name that was crushed like a porcelain ballerina upon first contact with the desert and the lives and the war and the children bleeding in the streets, staring blankly at the impossibly bright sky, tainted with hot thick smoke.

There is a swift movement, stealthy, easily missed. But not by her eyes. There is a reason she is till alive. He is dead before he has a chance to shout. A little more of her crumbles when she sees his face in the starlight. He couldn't be older than sixteen. Then she catches the look on his face, still rigid behind her. She has to look away, but it seems seared into her eyelids. He stares to long.

_**What about the world today**_

_**What about the place that we call home**_

_**We' ve never been so many**_

_**And we've never been so alone...**_

_**So alone**_

He's confused. She knows they've put him up in the front for a reason. It is a sort of roundabout complement to her, that they trust she will follow orders. She thinks that's dumb of them because she has never done anything but follow orders, and cannot imagine doing anything else. When your soul dies, it seems that your will does too. No big loss, since she doesn't need it. After all, she could die tonight. He could die tonight. He will die tonight, one way or another. And she will let him because it is an order.

He doesn't seem to know what to do, when to kill, if he should kill, what the hell killing was anyway. Such a loose term. She knows that well. It's all in front of him, in the form of a women who is too ragged and has blonde hair bleached white at bones by the unrelenting desert sun that claims all, and eyes that will not meet his. Yet he does not realize. He still does not realize.

He would if he saw the things in her eyes, but she is willing to put off that moment of terror stricken, morbid epiphany. As long as

_**You keep watching from your picket fence**_

_**You keep talking but it makes no sense**_

_**You say we're not responsible**_

_**But we are, we are**_

_**You wash your hands and come out clean**_

_**Fail to recognize the enemies within**_

_**You say we're not responsible**_

_**But we are, we are, we are, we are**_

He must have made up his mind, on something, she thinks. Because he begins to move away from her a little, in front of her. Fortunately for him not blocking her view. She guesses his eyes are determined onyx slits, but cannot be sure. She is mildly puzzled. He is not holding a weapon of any sort, only wearing his gloves with an odd insignia on their backs.

She follows the line of his body to see a man crouched in the shadows. He hadn't moved yet, probably warned by her earlier gunshot. But he didn't seem to know where they were. Of course he didn't. She was good, and knew it. She's alive, isn't she?

There is a delicate hint of light flashed into their hiding place. Starlight reflecting off a mirror, maybe. A small fleck of brilliance in this god forsaken alleyway. His white gloves glowed, and she saw the array. An alchemist. That was suddenly oddly familiar, that array, that man... as if she had seen it in some other life.

He crouches around the corner, taking aim with his hand. He was about to do it, she realized, with shock that tore through her like electricity. A soft crackle, the power that was alien and familiar.

There is nothing she can do. Someone must've once taught her not to mess with an alchemist while he was working. It seemed ingrained somewhere deep and hidden.

This man before her is about to leave, those proud eyes are about to die, and she must watch. It is an order. It is torture.

_**It's all about power then (we are)**_

_**Take control (we are)**_

_**Breaking the rule (we are, we are)**_

_**Breaking the soul (we are)**_

_**They suck us dry till there's nothing left (we are, we are)**_

_**My oh my, my oh my**_

The end. It is the end. That thing in her chest that is pathetic and desperate is fluttering like a scared bird. The cold air is thick yet sharp in her lungs. Somehow like breathing cotton, only with tiny shards of glass stuck into the white wooly strands.

Maybe there is a reason for this, but she doesn't know it, doesn't remember it, and doesn't want to. There is no explanation for this, no way to talk away senseless bloodshed. No way to justify murdering children in their beds for the mistake of being born with red eyes.

The man who is crouched yards away in the shadows, the one taking aim just in front of her, his breath ghosting as white as her hair; neither deserve this.

Neither deserve it, but in this world of sand and sin, it is the way to live, or at least keep that poor little thing in her chest beating.

Neither deserve it, and she would like to think that neither does she, except she deserves every punishment dolled out to her, accepts them gladly.

But this shouldn't be how the world is. To bad that is only a thought lost in the millions of stars and wishes and dreams that will fade with the sunrise.

With that light in his eyes.

_**We are**_

_**We are (its all )**_

_**We are**_

_**We are, we are (take control)**_

_**We are**_

_**We are**_

_**It's all about power**_

It was too quick for something so destructive. A simple snap of his fingers, and flames rose out of nothing but cold desert wind, consuming one body and two souls. She watched numbly as more came, came to die by their stained hands.

_**Then take control**_

In the end, everything becomes the desert. Alive yet not, and the most terrifying thing she has ever seen.

**A/N: I tried hard to get the climax right, I hope it worked! This was hard work to write, but worth it! Actually it's my very first songfic. I'm so happy! (Laugh) Please review!**


	4. I Can't Move

**A/N: This is going in a sort of loose chronological order, so you can correctly assume that this takes place after the events in the last chapter :)**

**icarus enjoyed the view — wow. That was the longest review I've ever seen that had the opening sentence of "I'm going to keep this short." Great job with cross-country! I have a friend who used to do it, but she moved to Virginia and I don't know if she still runs. My swim team won 1****st**** place for the boys and 2****nd**** for the girls in conference! I didn't get to swim in districts cause it's hard for girls to get in since there are more guys than girls. Our regionals are this weekend, I can't wait to see how it goes!!! You were right about Riza's thoughts, they aren't exactly what she's consciously thinking, but they are strongly affecting her actions. I think she tries not to think too much. It's kind of funny, the lines you say you like the most are the ones I throw in randomly, not really thinking about it... what I'm trying to say is thank you so much for the longest review I have ever gotten!**

**winglessfairy25 — to be honest, I don't know how old they are, or what rank... I'm sorry about that, if anyone wants to give me a few tips it would be greatly appreciated. (Crap, I started another story without knowing half enough about the characters. How many times will I do this before I learn?) I have read some of the manga, but I don't have a lot of time lately. I'm sorry if there were some errors, that was all my fault, I've been writing so darn late at nigh (well, technically, the morning) I'm glad you liked it, even with the problems! What confused you exactly? Thanks for reviewing!!!**

I Can't Move

He'd fallen so much more fantastically than her. She figured the shock was about the same. The feeling that it wasn't just the room spinning, it wasn't just the tent or your head. It was the entire desert spinning around and around, the whole world spinning so hard that your stomach revolted and so did your poor heart that you will soon realize is past repair and will never be what it was again.

She could hear him retching behind his tent. There were other ones at the same activity and other ones who already had made the air thick with cigarette smoke. And there were some like her who just sat and stared straight ahead, blind to anything and everything. For once she couldn't remember the battle. It was all a blur of fear and hands that didn't shake anymore (not until afterwards; afterwards her whole body quaked, and she couldn't move.) Of the stink of death. All she could pull into her fractured mind was a splintered image of fire growing where it shouldn't be able to. Of fire that was an animal with molten teeth and searing claws.

The image could move in and out of focus, drift and scatter and melt, because her head didn't have the strength to keep it whole. But that didn't take away any of the memory. That didn't keep her from knowing that her head was to weak to keep one image together. Just because she was too weak to keep one man together.

And now he had fallen hard and fast to where he lay, broken, lost. Not understanding just what he'd done, what they'd done to him. In time he will understand that it is not something you can understand. And it's not something you can know and see and smell and touch and keep your sanity at the same time.

He has just signed up for a lifetime of ghosts whispering in his ear. And now he knows it. Her own ghosts are rising up inside her and she listens to him heave without hearing. Sniffs the stinging aroma of second hand smoke without smelling. Feels the blood between her fingers without touching. Sees her hair bleached white as the bones the desert greedily swallows without looking in a non-present mirror. There's no need to leave her head now, not when the whole world is in her head already. And she is slowly losing the grip of her will, so the world inside her head is a little number, a little quieter.

Stubbornness is not a good enough reason to live, maybe. That would be a problem for her little heart that wants so desperately, so pitifully to keep beating, because stubbornness is the only thing she has now except for her orders and her gun and the ever shifting sands.

She is shaking, because she knows that she doesn't care, that she is becoming just like the ones who just want to die. Some of them did. Just decided they'd rather die by their own hands, instead of by some innocent forced to kill to survive. She let that image into her world, let it rip her apart, let it help her to repent for the lives of that day, for the lives of the day before, and before that and then and then. She can't remember how long she's been here, and she can't remember ever being not here, so she has been here forever. And one memory cannot repay the sins of forever. That is an impossibility.

Footsteps crunch on sand and she suddenly is wrenched into a world that is too sharp and too cruel. His hair is black, but the desert has already taken the luster out of once perfect locks. Now he was dusty and his heart was destroyed, decimated in an all-shattering blast of what passed as reality in this world he would come to only know.

He stumbles towards her. Broken eyes like shards of black glass, crushed underfoot, they catch hers, and hold them there because seen another's eyes in months. They are dead. Her body shakes.

"Why?" his voice is raw.

She is shaking with guilt, and she cannot move.

**A/N: I actually wrote this while writing the last chapter, and finished it before I got to the third verse...! haha. I hope you all liked this! I enjoyed writing it. Reviews are my life-juice! I love them!**


	5. Arithmetic Dies

**A/N: Hello! I'm alive! This chapter was originally planned to be a piece on Havoc and Riza. But then I started writing that, got a small case of writer's block, and stopped. I think a single sentence that popped into my head around two in the morning started this one. That sentence just kept growing...**

**TheQueenOfMediocrity — thank you, I want to make it so that people can not only see it, but also hear it and taste it and feel it, and to know I took a step towards that is a really good feeling! Thanks!**

**icarus enjoyed the view — woot! The uber-review! I think I responded to this before, but thanks again, since I could never ever thank you enough for all the help you gave me (I'm even using some of that info for drawing doujin) and everything! I'm kind of updating instead of responding to your email, so sorry (but I'll do that soon! I promise!)**

**winglessfairy25 — thanks for all the info! I really meant to PM you, but just when I thought life couldn't get more insane, it did. That chapter creeped you out...? oops, sorry! Why did it, though? I'll have to go back and re-read... (though, thinking about it, I'm using pretty angsty, creepy themes involving mental sanity and war etc. Ack...) Thank you so much for the wonderful review!**

**cailceadon flame — wow, thanks so much! I love the feeling I get when a character is in character. I hope you like this chapter!**

**And without further ado.**

Maybe She Was/Arithmetic Dies

"Eight days, fourteen hours." he chanted to himself, mumbling over the desert wind that whipped his black hair into his eyes. "My name is Roy Mustang. I live in Amestris. My apartment is on the corner of Twelfth Street and Meridian. And I have been here for eight days and fourteen hours." the wind rose, and with it rose his feverish words. Drowning him out and pushing him down, trying to pull his soul into the sand. But what soul could he have left? The man blinked rapidly.

"A-and I have a soul." he probably wasn't alone, pacing the edge of the tent line. But no one here gave a damn. He could feel himself sinking towards that sort of existence. His finders thrummed where he knew blood had been; would be again.

Looking up, he could see there was someone near. A woman — no, hell that was a girl, she looked familiar to a hazy memory of a girl, and his vision kept skipping between the two, so he was unable to focus, to pick out a clear image.

But that human (Is she? Am I? Was she?) had to be a woman, because no mere girl looks like that. Her blond hair was cut short with long saffron bangs swept to the side. The dry wind pulled them down, and he watched them skitter across her face, flickering over hard cheekbones and brushing her lips. Maybe she was once beautiful.

But it was as if there was something beneath her skin that most people have — should have; can't survive without — that was missing.

Or was missing not accurate? _Broken?_ His boots paused in the sand, and he could feel tiny, hot auric particles rubbing in his sox. That "something" was there, but it was only a shifting pile of shattered glass and porcelain. Like a broken ballerina statuette — fragments spilled out all over the floor. His image flickered to the whole ballerina, to the girl of whispering memory, to a ballerina spinning whole and perfect on the lid of a carved pine music box; a snapshot of the past as it grappled with the present.

Fainter and fainter those memories appeared. He'd never been anywhere but the desert, he supposed. The soldier with the long dark, eyes and inky hair and broken glass in his mouth whispered to the blinding sun, maybe hoping it would steal the sight from those eyes, since there was no longer any way to brighten them.

"Eight days, fourteen hours..."

She was polishing her gun, hand calloused and rhythmic. The metal shone in the hell-cursed sun. He followed that steady rhythm of her fingertips, winding it into his voice. "Eight days, fourteen hours."

"Useless." the voice was so dead it sounded like the desert itself speaking from the voids of dunes and the carved, shifting valleys where the wind whispers. Like the cold midnight wind that would scream despondently, spawning nightmares and memories for the children of red, red eyes pleading for mercy. No mercy. No mercy! Not for the children and not for themselves.

He realized that it was the woman with the shatter-glass mirage under her skin whose voice he'd heard. She said nothing more. It hardly mattered that it was her who spoke, and not the sands, because there was as much living woman inside her as there was in the sky; as much as the human in him, now. He didn't want to meet her eyes. And she didn't want to meet his.

So he stared at his hands and she at her gun, and he stopped counting.

_Useless. Because there is only eternity and in eternity there is only Ishbal._

**A/N: Hey, anyone have any scenes they know happened between Riza and Roy in Ishbal? Or any other character (nearly) for that matter. I'm watching the anime online, and trying to record it, and I'm reading the manga, but I can only get so far (since Ishbal, when it comes down to it, is really just an amazingly well done background story). So any suggestions would be awesome! Like, did Riza really have a transmutation circle or something on her back? Did Roy really study with her father? See, I know these from fanfics, so I'm not sure if they were made up or not... sorry for asking so many questions...! please review!**

**Ps. Hey, lettie, look! I updated! How the heck did that happen?**


End file.
